


The Darkness Between Stars

by Esteliel



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Angst, F/M, Hatesex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-25
Updated: 2013-12-25
Packaged: 2018-01-06 03:23:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,729
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1101803
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Esteliel/pseuds/Esteliel
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <em>She was mad, there was no doubt about it, and he hated her too for all the lost potential. Madness was cowardice. Madness was running away, and he had never run.</em>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Darkness Between Stars

**Author's Note:**

  * For [AeonDelirium](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AeonDelirium/gifts).



> Merry Christmas! *hugs* Maybe next year I'll know better than to try and write in a new fandom as a gift - though knowing myself, I'd probably do it all over again.

The first time, she smiled. It was a smug smile, the smile of a girl aware of her power and her beauty and the worth of her family's name.

He wanted to hate her as he stood in the garden of her parent's mansion. He did hate her. It was still easy to hate in those years. Hate then wasn't a festering old wound, oozing blackness that wearied him with the way it sucked up all thoughts of happiness like a Dementor. Hate now was old and familiar; hate was a rickety house he lived in, like the worn body he inhabited. But hate back then was hot, a black so fierce that it burned red at its heart, scalding like a thousand suns as he curled up on the ground with their jeering faces above him, hot and cruelly beautiful as he closed his eyes in his musty bed at night and dreamed fevered dreams of his father's red blood on their worn carpet while he blocked out his mother's screams.

He hated Bellatrix with the ease of those early years, for all she was, for all he was not, which always made him hate harder, hate more fiercely, until sometimes it felt like the hate was all there was left of him. All they had left for him. They took everything else, after all, but the redblack heat of his hate was the fuel of his ambition, the magic that filled each successful curse and hex at school. 

Her lip curled as she looked down at him with the arrogance of her nineteen years, and he looked back at her from the resolve of ten years of hate. It was not much. Already the edges of his hate were frayed, despair tearing at it until one day it would become worn and ragged, a veil that kept out the sun but did no longer warm him. Still, back then, there was still power in it, and he cherished it for that.

She laughed at him, and he hated how the sound made him feel. There was no real malice in it – nothing but the cruelty of a pretty nineteen-year-old girl talking to what she thought was a stupid child. He scowled at her when she dared to lecture him from those lips painted a daring red against the whiteness of her skin. “No, no, no,” she drawled, laughing at the absurd thought that a child would dare such advanced Dark Magic. “That's adorable, but for that to work you need true cruelty behind it--”

She stopped laughing when his Crucio hit the snarling dog before them, and he still remembers the reluctant admiration in her eyes with a grim sort of satisfaction.

#

He thought of that first meeting again when she stood before him while Narcissa's despair filled the small sitting room until any other man would have suffocated. But he had learned to breathe despair instead of air when he was still a child. 

Bellatrix did not smile now. Time and life had not been kind to her. Where cruel arrogance had once given her face unearthly beauty, now the cruel gleam in her eyes was tinged with madness. It did not become her. Severus knew well that there was fear behind all madness; and her questions, her talk of the Dark Lord had a hint of the pathetic now. He smiled, as condescending as she once was, and wondered if she still remembered that meeting. He had learned a lot about cruelty since then, and about power. Bellatrix might despise love - but he had learned that there was no greater cruelty.

He was not surprised when she came back after Narcissa left. She watched him warily as she prowled through the room. The elegance of her youth was gone – what beauty remained to her was that of a suspicious cat, thin and starved and dishevelled, all claws and teeth if you dared so much as think of touching her.

Severus narrowed his eyes behind the curtain of his hair, unsettled for a moment by his thoughts. He had not thought about touching her for a long while now. There had been thoughts of that sometimes, when he was young, when she was bright and cruel and witty, the Dark Lord’s favourite student. Mere curiosity, perhaps - or simply the attraction of power.

But she was not in power now. As their conversation had proven so well, Voldemort trusted him more now than he trusted her.

His smile widened a little as he watched her scowl at a dusty book, then walk on, circling the small room. A caged animal. Azkaban had changed her, there was no hiding it. And it would not do to underestimate her. Madness was weakness, but she still had strength enough. Madness was also unpredictable, although it seemed that for now, he was safe from further questions. The Unbreakable Vow had answered all questions and accusations she might have still harboured. Perhaps that was why she had returned. To circle like a hungry wolf, snapping at any hand that reached out, vicious with hunger and distrust and hot, blind hate.

For a moment, he wondered what her hate tasted like. Was it still hot, burning, all-consuming passion like the hate of his ten-year-old heart when they had relentlessly made his life a living hell? Or had Azkaban leeched all warmth from her heart, the same way her death had stifled the last embers in his breast so long ago? Was Bellatrix's hate now little more than a threadbare garment suffocating her, beneath those dishevelled black curls?

He dis not quite know how it happened, but he found himself with his arm stretched out, her lanky body imprisoned between his own and the rackety bookshelves. The hair in his hand was surprisingly heavy. It was not the sleek, glossy black he remembered from so many years ago. Azkaban must have long since cured her from the pretensions of cosmetic spells. And what mattered most to Voldemort was power, not beauty. Power and success. 

But even so, despite the tangled mess of her curls, her hair was soft, and it smelled of the barest hint of an exotic perfume. Maybe Narcissa's. But there was also sulphur, ozone, the scent of furious thunderstorms on summer nights, and he could almost remember the powerful Bellatrix he had loved to hate as a child.

She whirled around at the touch, her face a mask of intense emotion as she stared at him. For a moment he thought it was hate indeed - hate for the man who stole her place as Voldemort's confidante.

And then she crushed her lips against his, the pain of her teeth as sharp as knives, so that a groan escaped him despite himself. She was furious, and so was he, all of a sudden, furious at the way she had looked down at his ten-year-old self, furious at how she kept questioning him today, furious at the many, many times she had spoken against him, whispered her suspicions into Narcissa's ears and who knew to how many others. Spreading lies, spreading rumours - and who cared that at the bottom of everything, there might have been truth to what she feared.

He hated her for how far above him she had been, and for the danger she was now - but that was not quite what made him push her against the shelf while she buried her nails in his skin, forcing another groan of surprised pain from him.

"He is not... He does not need you," she hissed, pulling back for a moment to look at him with a strange triumph. "He thinks you are useful. But he will never love you. You are a coward. He does not like cowards."

"So cowardly that I just swore an Unbreakable Vow to kill Dumbledore myself, should your nephew not succeed?" he murmured, licking some blood from the corner of his mouth.

She made another sound of frustrated rage, her eyes darting back and forth as if even now she feared herself imprisoned, and for one short moment he wondered with something almost approaching compassion whether the small room stuffed with old books felt like a cell to her. It was a prison. It had always been a prison, and he had never felt a need to change it. It seemed more honest, this way, to live in a place that looked just as derelict and abandoned as his heart. There was no need to pretend that he needed anything more than what was gathered here.

He was not quite certain how they ended up on the floor. He would not have put it past her to have used a hex, but it was difficult to remember what else she might have done when her nails raised furious red welts on his arms, her starved body incongruously light atop his, for all that it held such hate, such passion.

He did not think that she used a hex – not against him, not in his own house, he would never have allowed such a thing – but then, that meant that all that happened happened willingly, and that was hard to bear when even now a part of him still shuddered with revulsion at the thought of how he had lost control.

For she had made him lose control. It had been a long, long time since that last happened. There were a hundred ways to deal with unwelcome needs for a wizard. A thousand for a man well versed in potions and the Dark Arts. He took advantage of them sometimes, simply because it was the most convenient thing to do, and a habit that was hard to overcome – but this was something else. 

It was unsettling. If he lost control, he was dead. That had been true for far too many years now. One unguarded thought, one wrong word in Voldemort's presence, and all he had worked for so long would be lost. 

She smiled down at him with triumph, and that, at last, was close enough to the smile he remembered that he almost flinched. His hands in turn came to wrap around her waist, and she laughed softly. "He'll never want you the way he wants me," she said sweetly, eyes wide and gleaming as she looked down at him with pleasure. "You can spy and sneak and betray again and again – but I went to Azkaban for him. I never betrayed him. Not once."

He wanted her to shut up. Maybe he should feel compassion for a woman who had lost half of her sanity in prison, but her constant talk about the Dark Lord's favour was as annoying as the whining of every miserable child at Hogwarts. He hated her for that too, that pathetic need for Voldemort's approval that was truly not so different from being forced to listen to Harry Potter complain and tell lies about his father for far too many years.

Her fingers were on his skin all of a sudden, and that was a shock. It had been a long time. These things were usually too much effort – and dangerous, too. But even though her fingers were long and spindly from hunger and imprisonment, there was strength enough left in them that the marks she left on his skin hurt. He clenched his teeth, refusing to make a sound, furious with her, furious with his body, furious with the way she shook with a trill of laughter as he reversed their positions. Her hands moved to his back beneath the robes, scouring his skin with her nails until he groaned and pulled at her own clothes, nearly ripping her black skirt.

She laughed again, breathless now, her eyes wide and mad as she watched. "Do you dare to touch me, Severus?" she mocked. "Do you? Do you think you are strong enough?"

Then suddenly the mockery was gone and she almost deflated, moulding herself to him as she clung close in a parody of a lover's embrace.

"All these Dementors... And nothing to touch me, nothing to warn me but memories of _him_. Even the Dementors didn't dare to kiss me, Severus. I would sometimes hope they would try. I told them to, asked them to, I told them I would suck their souls right out of their mouths and swallow them down. You know what I mean, don't you, Severus? All that despair, all that delicious fear... I would eat it right up. I would eat Death itself and spit it back out and laugh, laugh and laugh..."

She fell silent then, and he felt his impatience grow. She was mad, there was no doubt about it, and he hated her too for all the lost potential. Madness was cowardice. Madness was running away, and he had never run.

"Shut up," he said quietly, jaw clenched. "Just shut up, foolish girl."

Another trill of laughter escaped, incongruously girlish. "I'm older than you, dear Severus," she mocked and pushed her hand beneath his robes again, impatiently opening his pants with those long bony fingers. He was hard when she drew him out, and he groaned again as she slid down onto him, hot inside despite the cold despair eating away at her. 

Or maybe that was why she had fled into madness. Maybe there was heat to be found there, the heat of the hate he had once clung to, until it had been devoured by the cold emptiness of his own despair.

He closed his eyes as she moved atop him, eyes wide and laughing, though at least she had stopped her incessant chatter. Her moans were sibilant, reminiscent of the serpentine hissing of the man she worshipped, but the way she writhed atop him, nails clawing at his skin with perfect despair was enough to make him forget all thoughts of _him_ for a moment. He grabbed her hips to reverse their positions, rough now as he moved with something that was almost anger – though it was not anger at her, not truly, and she laughed with delight, her eyes gleaming as she moaned beneath him with his blood staining her nails.

It did not last long, and he felt empty as he rolled off her while she still shuddered with pleasure beneath him, two bony fingers in her mouth to suck his blood from them. She gave him a smile then, stretching on his dirty floor with her pale skin pulled too tightly over her bones, hips and thighs and sunken stomach mottled with bruises he had left, and some he hadn't.

"Do you think you could do that, Severus?" she asked dreamily. "Have you ever imagined that? Kissing a Dementor, kissing death and darkness and despair and sucking it all up until it fills you like the darkness between stars?"

He glared at her, even more annoyed by her nonsense now that his arousal had faded fast to leave him in an even deeper pit of despair than usual. 

"Out," he said curtly, straightening his clothes, appalled by this sudden loss of control. This wouldn't happen again. She would not be so mad as to accuse him of betrayal again, not after his vow, and maybe, whatever this had been, it would at least help to make her believe that she knew his wants, his needs, that his dreams of power were like her own.

His fingers tightened into fists of frustrated annoyance as she rose slowly with all the grace of a starved cat.

"Poor Severus," she murmured and came closer as if for a kiss, eyes still laughing when he pushed her away roughly.

"He doesn't love you either. He doesn't even like you," she said gravely, as if trusting him with a cruel secret. To her, it probably was. “But that is no surprise. He is the Dark Lord. And you are just a spy. But I like how you taste. I miss it sometimes. All that darkness. Perhaps I'll suck out your soul one day."

She laughed again, that incongruous, airy sound that should have belonged to the innocent little girl she had never been, and then she was gone, and he clutched his wand and in a mad fit of rage slashed open the upholstery of the threadbare sofa until the mouldy filling spilled out like pale intestines.


End file.
